E-collaboration Electronic Supply-chain Interlock (ESI) is a real-time collaboration application that facilitates electronic interaction between IBM Procurement and its tier suppliers for key business processes.
The application consists of the Commodity, Part number, Keyword and Archive databases.
ESI Commodity encompasses business processes and facilitates collaboration and communication allowing users 24 hour secure, real-time access via the Internet. ESI enhances supplier alliance and streamlines IBM’s procurement process. All transactions are automatically documented for use in gathering measurements and information for IBM and the supplier base, with 100% traceability.
The ESI Commodity database interacts with other databases such as eXplore. This data is stored in the Part number database.
ESI Usage benefits
- Securely access data outside the firewall with unique IBM Registration (IR) userid and password.
- Instant access to documents by IBM and its suppliers.
- Post documents in the same method by both IBM and suppliers.
- Instant e-mails provide expedient, efficient, and secure communication.
- Dynamic document category creation.
- IBM and Suppliers can access archived data.
- Bidding and contract management process.
- Central common process across Global Procurement.
- Paperless, real-time, and secure system that captures and stores IBM/supplier communication.
- Parent response hierarchy is maintained between collaborating parties.
- Attach/detach files.
- Instant e-mail with link to the document.
- Archive/unarchive a document (manual and automatic).
- Delete a document (manual and automatic).
- Dynamic contact list by council/commodity.
- Back-end processes to monitor documents and send alerts where applicable.
- Dynamic FTP upload/download process definition.
- Publish part number data for suppliers and IBM.
Access to the IBM-hosted domino server outside the IBM firewall is controlled, while Web users have the added security of the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). ESI provides a development environment that promotes the customization of processes, providing flexibility for user and supplier alike.
IBM regular users have access to their own council's information in all the databases. Supplier users have access to documents for their company only. Further security is provided at the document level, where the user can limit its access to a restricted group of users.